Monday morning arrived early, or at least it seemed early to Molly. The weekend was slow as she spent her time reading. She and Bev were planning to go to Jamestown Mall but that fell through because Bev had to go with her family to visit her grandparents. Besides reading Holmes, she read ahead in American History. She liked history and currently they were studying the American Revolution, making the reading fun. She made notes as she went along, and her dad happened to see them. He asked her if she wanted to see how he took notes during work meetings. She really didn’t want to, but she told him yes. He went into his bedroom and returned with his briefcase. He took out a notebook and handed it to her. She opened the cover and on the first page, she saw strings of words on lines. She looked up at him confused and he told her it is called fishbone. She looked at it closer and it became clear what he meant. There was a long flatline with a few words on it which could be the fish’s spine. Springing up from the main line there were many lines, above and below, with words on them. They could be the ribs of the fish. He explained that the spine line was a topic and the offspring lines were items related to the topic. He thought it was a freer way to take notes. She smiled at him and told him it was clever, and he went away happy.
She stretched in her bed, turned, and stared at her desk. Hanging from the back of the chair were the clothes she had put out last night. It was a dark brown sweatshirt, blue jeans, and her cowboy boots stood next to it. She needed something brighter. She threw the cover off and stood up. She knew she had a bright yellow blouse but couldn’t remember if she had it hanging in her closet or folded in her dresser. She threw her closet door open and the blouse jumped out at her immediately. She smiled and practically danced back to her bed, hugging it all the way.
It was windy outside, and Molly pulled her hood over her head as she waited at the bus stop. She was the first one there and she swayed from one foot to the other in an effort to stay warm. Bev was the first to join her.
“How is grandma and grandpa?” Molly asked her when she stepped up beside her.
“Fine,” Bev sighed. “I don’t know what they all talk about, but it always seems endless.”
“I get it. Thank goodness my brother comes along to entertain us.” Molly said. “Hi Harold. Good weekend?”
“I had a soccer game so yeah,” Harold answered her.
The conversation stopped and it continued to be silent as they rode along to school. The three of them simply waved to each other and went their separate ways when they entered the building. Molly stopped at her locker to leave her hoodie and then continued on to Homeroom. She stepped inside the room and nodded at Mr. Branson who was sitting at his desk with his hands folded on it. He nodded back. Molly wondered if the man ever smiled. She sat in her assigned seat and placed her backpack on the floor beside her. The bell rang and those students that were still standing, sat, and Mr. Branson stood up. He read through roll call and the speaker crackled with the drum roll of the national anthem. They all stood with their right hands over their hearts. They sat when it was over and waited. The speaker crackled again.
“Good morning S, L, M, S. I hope you had a nice weekend and are ready for a great week,” Principal Marty began her Monday morning announcements.
Molly’s mind turned to Sherlock Holmes and wondered what he did during Monday morning announcements. Did he read a newspaper? Try to create cryptographs to confuse his friends? Hey, she thought, what a great idea! She reached down to her backpack and grabbed a notebook and placed it on the desk. She pulled a pencil from the backpack, too, and set it next to the notebook.
“And finally,” Principal Marty continued. “Our first school event is coming up. It is a school dance, a sock-hop, and it will be a week from Friday so pay attention to the bulletin boards. More information will be made available to you, if you are interested, at your class offices. Thank you and go SLMS!”
When the crackle of the speaker sounding off ended, several hands went up in the air. Mr. Branson sighed and pointed to a girl in the front row.
“Tell us about the Sock-Hop, Mr. Branson.
At the end of the school day, Molly, Bev, and Harold walked into club meeting and found Miss Marvel already there. With her was a short, average looking man. They were quietly talking to each other behind the desk. Molly noticed a stack of white cards and a small black bag beside it. When they sat down, Carol had entered the room and sat with them. Bev had quietly retrieved the red spiral notebook from her backpack and already had it open to a blank page. She wrote the date on it. When Jason and Ted entered the room, Miss Marvel closed the door behind them.
“Good afternoon,” she greeted them in her quiet voice. “As you may have remembered, I told you last week that I was bringing a friend to our next club meeting. This is Detective Tracy, Detective Tracy, this is The Whodunnit Club.”
“Hello,” Detective Tracy began as Miss Marvel sat in a seat near the door. “I am glad to be here and I understand that you want to learn about fingerprints. I cannot stay long but just long enough to make you dangerous,” he smiled at his joke, but the group didn’t, so he continued. “A fingerprint is an impression left by the friction ridges of a finger, or foot, or palms. There are two types, Exemplar, which is what we are going to do today and Latent, which I will demonstrate one of the techniques we use in forensic science. You are studying Sherlock Holmes so I will demonstrate the dusting method which is what was used in his timeframe.
“Before you ask me, let me describe the difference between Exemplar and Latent. Exemplar prints are those that are intentionally made, like when someone is arrested for a crime and we get their fingerprints. Latent are those prints that are found at crime scenes that may not be seen to the naked eye. Wait, that is not exactly true. There are some prints that are seen, and we call those Patent prints and we have to do something to them to be able to collect them.”
“What do you mean?” Carol asked.
“Well, in order to be able to maintain a copy of the prints something has to be done to it, usually chemically, and then picked up with something adhesive.”
“Like tape?” Harold chimed in.
“Like tape,” the detective nodded back at him.
Detective Tracy handed each of them a white card including Miss Marvel. The white card had two rows of squares with five squares in each row. He then asked each of them to bring their cards to the teacher’s desk where he was sitting, one at a time. When it was Molly’s turn, he took her card from her and set it in front of him and held out his hand.
“Right hand,” he said as he rolled a small roller on a black ink pad.
She held her hand out to him. He took it and spread the roller across all of her fingertips including her thumb. He then rocked each digit in one square of the lower row. He wrote the word, right, beneath the first imprint. He reversed the card so that, what was the top row, was now the bottom one.
“Left hand,” he said, and they repeated the process.
When everyone had returned to their seat with their white card. Detective Tracy began to speak again as he repacked the black bag with the items he used in the process.
“Take a look at your prints. How many of you have prints that appear to be loops?”
Bev, Carol, Ted, and Jason raised their hands.
“How many of you have prints that look like whorls, more circular looking?”
Molly and Harold raised their hands.
“Finally, does anyone have a print that looks like an arch?”
Miss Marvel raised her hand. Detective Tracy smiled at her. “Those three types are used by a classification system called the Henry Classification System and statistically, 60 – 65% of people are loops, 30 – 35% are whorls, and 5% are arches.”
“I thought fingerprints are unique to an individual. Why does that matter?” Jason asked him.
“That’s true, fingerprints are unique but if we were to reprint you right now, your own prints might be slightly different. The reason for that could be the amount of ink on your finger, or the pressure used to roll your finger on the card, for example. The classification system is used by an expert to determine whether two prints are the same.”
“Could I compare two prints to see if they are the same or not?” Molly asked him.
“With some magnification, you might be close enough in your assessment to get an expert involved,” Detective Tracy answered her and then added, “It was great meeting you, but I have to run.”
He stood up from the desk and turned to Miss Marvel. He moved to toward her, but she hastily reached out her hand. He paused, shook it, and walked out of the room. She closed the door behind him and walked to her place in the club’s circle of chairs and sat down.
“That was interesting, wasn’t it?” she stated.
“Yes,” Molly said. “We learned that you, Miss Marvel, are unique. Your prints are part of the smallest percentage of prints.”
“That was interesting,” Miss Marvel agreed with her. “I had no idea.”
To be continued…
My First Stories 